Improving Rabbit Habitat

The trend in hunting is to do all that is legally permitted to attract wild game. Waterfowlers spend endless dollars planting food sources and flooding fields. Deer hunters put in food plots and dove hunters prepare fields to concentrate numbers and improve the odds for successful hunts.

So how do you improve your land for rabbit hunting? Add food plots? Build brush piles? The answer is fairly simply – do nothing. Just let fields go and allow the native plants, briars, grasses, shrubs and trees grow. This will provide all the cover and food sources needed to increase your rabbit population. Many think that building brush piles throughout your property will provide the necessary cover to increase the rabbit population. Others suggest this does very little and there is no substitute for natural native cover. Food plots are great for deer, but providing food in the open makes rabbits an easy target for predators.

Many folks would consider the land pictured here too rough, but it is a beautiful sight to the rabbit hunter! We have a number of fields we have “let go.” Meaning they were either clear cuts or hay fields and we have allowed the native grasses, shrubs, trees, and briars to grow. And we have seen the rabbit numbers increase significantly!

This land was clear-cut a number of years ago and has become an ideal rabbit habitat. However, this land is basically unhuntable without shooting lanes.

All that is needed is a little bush hog work to clear the shooting lanes!

We widened the existing logging roads and cut several new shooting lanes. With a 6′ bush hog, two passes at 12′ makes an adequate shooting lane, but 18′ is better – especially for young hunters and trying to get some hunting footage.

Two pass shooting lane through a wall of briars and saplings (before and after).

Three pass shooting lane on a logging road (before and after).

One of the new shooting lanes (before and after).

We look forward to hunting this land and expect to have some action pack hunts! The combination of native growth and a little bush hogging makes this property an ideal place to hunt rabbits!

SC has a strong rabbit population all over – from the mountains and foothills to the low country. We have found that it often takes quite a bit looking to find and secure good places to rabbit hunt. Rabbits populations seem to be thick in pockets – as one farm will have very few rabbits and a farm just down the road is covered up. The main thing I look for is thick, thick cover. Rabbits need it to survive the endless preditors from coyotes to house cats. Keep trying as many places as you can and start building a list of good hunting places. Enjoy the rest of your rabbit season!

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